Uneasy Alliances

He winked again, and she heard him say to the two fawning apprentices, "You two compare experiences, it will do you both good. Right now, I have an appointment with this young lady, whom I can't keep waiting any longer. Go practice first plane access. Tomorrow we do the second plane. Go on, now."

Both students looked over their shoulders at her with resentful, jealous eyes that changed visibly when they saw what "young lady" Randal meant. She glimpsed surprise and a new respect and something nastier in their backward glances as they left, whispering together.

With their passing, she and Randal were alone. She drew back a step. He didn't follow but stood unmoving, hands hooked in his fighter's belt, a slow smile on his freckled face.

He was so bold, so handsome, so brave. He was the Stepsons' chosen mage, a fighting magician who'd battled in the Wizard Wars. He was the most romantic single figure in the beleaguered Sanctuary Mageguild and Merricat wished miserably that she could disappear, sink through the floorboards, and be gone.

What did he care of her troubles, her doubts, her questions? She wished Dika was here, a comforting weight on her shoulder. Sometimes Dika seemed to speak for her, lend her courage. Butnot tonight. Falcons weren't welcome in Mageguild study halls.

Neither was she. It was obvious that the keen eyes of Randal were reading her soul. She trembled, went up on tiptoes, and eyed the doors through which the others had gone. Still time to run.

"Well, Merricat, how was your trip to the first plane?" said Randal gently as at last he came toward her.

He knew her name! She could hardly believe it. She said hastily, "Well, it's fine, there was a blird who spook weirds to me, and round trees." Damned and tongue-tied, she wanted to die. She closed her eyes-

And heard a voice so close she nearly fainted, "I saw something or other of that, I must admit. Would you like to talk about it over a drink?" and felt the mage touch her arm lightly, oh so lightly.

Saw something? What a mage he was! Talk about it over a drink? She took deep breaths and opened her eyes and said fervently, "Oh yes you, bless!" And, mortified, put her hand to her mouth again. If she could just calm down, her words wouldn't get scrambled. Blird who spooked weirds. She cringed inwardly.

The mage's fingers covered hers and drew her hand away from her lips. Then he was examining her palm, where the wasp nest's mark still could be seen.

When he looked up, his brow was furrowed. "What's here means more to me than you'd understand. It would be a favor if you'd share your experience with me, and anything else that might be relevant that's happened to you lately. Wasps and I have a ... special understanding."

The hand that wasn't holding Merricat's went to his waist, where a wavy sword, short and foreign-looking, hung in a tooled scabbard.

Miserably, afraid to trust her traitorous voice, Merricat nodded. How to tell him about it all? About the wasp on the first plane, and the weapon her friend Shawme had found, that silver tube that shot tiny wasplike pieces of metal when you blew through it-the weapon Merricat was certain that Dika had wanted Shawme to keep?

In fact, how to tell Randal anything at all, with her tongue tied in knots and her heart pounding? How indeed, while she was sure to the very depths of her soul that she'd done something wrong in helping Shawme, and in coming to the Mageguild, and in falling hopelessly in love with the famed and fearsome mage Randal in the first place?

Shawme was trembling uncontrollably and afraid someone would no- tice her, making herself small in a comer among the other girls in Myrtis's saloon.

And someone had. One of the musicians, a percussionist who pounded drums and shook bells and crashed cymbals, kept watching her as he played.

The attention of the musician made things worse. As did every man who came ducking in through Myrtis's beaded curtains, who stalked around the room, drink and smoke in hand, and touched this girl or that before making up his mind and escorting his chosen up the back stairs to the girl's room.

Worse, because none of them so much as ogled Shawme. She might as well have stayed upstairs. Worse too, because if a man did approach her, she was sure she'd break and run- Unless, of course, that man was Zip.

After a while she closed her eyes, secure in her comer with stout redfrescoed walls against her back, certain she'd get through this whole night u

Shawme didn't know anyone like those soldiers, any more than she knew the sort of brocaded nobles who came in groups of twos and threes, smelling of perfume like the women, and gathered up giggling ladies by the armload.

The only man who noticed her was the musician, a youngster with barely a beard and naked, sweaty arms. Her son. From undistinguished begi

But it didn't work out that way.

She was studying the frescoes in the saloon through a growing fog of smoke, finally realizing how instructive they were to an ignorant girl. On them men were portrayed doing what she'd seen dogs do in the street. And women knelt before them, doing mysterious things that involved kissing. Shawme was trying to guess at what that would be like, feeling her mouth grow dry and her heart pound as each successive man took someone else and the crowd of women thi

So she didn't notice the newcomers until the beaded curtain rattled, and then she quickly lowered her eyes.

Three men had come in together, laughing, arm in arm, with a fourth behind them, taciturn. The three were military men, highly ranked since they'd been allowed to wear their weapons in here. The fourth was armed as well, and unsmiling. His glance caught hers before she looked away.

In front of Shawme's corner was a couch on which three older girls reclined, each showing thigh or bare perfumed shoulder or a hint of rosy breast. The three jolly soldiers, unmistakably a little drunk, came their way. The tallest one was blond with braids in his hair and a goblet in his hand.

He stared directly at Shawme for three heartbeats, and on the fourth her heart threatened to stop entirely. That look was a look of recognition, but she couldn't remember ever meeting such a soldier. She was sure he was coming for her.

She shrank back in the corner, trying to push her way through the frescoed walls; trying to get breath into her lungs, enough breath for flight if he held out a hand to her as she'd seen men do here.

She would run right past him, duck under his arm and fly out through the curtained doorway, into the street, back to Ratfall. She'd run and run until her heart burst.

But the blond man looked away then, at the girls on the couch between Shawme and his soldier friends, and held out a hand to one of them, who squealed, "Oh, Walegrin, you're looking fit tonight," and giggled.

In relief, Shawme squeezed her eyes shut. In that solitary darkness, her relief was eaten up by chagrin. Then came embarrassment and mortification, shame and despair. No man was going to choose her. She was going to fail. All the other girls would laugh at her.